Day 5 Wednesday 12/14

We decided to drive to Tecolote beach and take a tour to the Isla Spiritu Santo, which is an uninhabited nature preserve with abundant marine life and beautiful secluded beaches. The island is on the UNESCO heritage list. When we got to the beach, we saw that the sea was rough with big waves and strong wind. One of the tour operators, “Big Nose”, was trying to pressure us to commit to going, but another operator, Ramon, told us that the weather was not good for the tour so we gave up the idea. Instead we went to Balandra beach. While walking along the beach we met a couple from Victoria, Canada and had a nice conversation with them. They told us about their favorite restaurants and Al invited them to join us for dinner at Nim’s (their favorite place). We went back to Tecolote beach for lunch – this time at the Concha restaurant, where Bo had a big portion of Ceviche and Al and Lucy had a whole red snapper each. The food was delicious and it was served under a palapa right on the beach. Then we took a dip in the sea and went back to La Paz. We wanted to make it in time to go to the main city market, Mercado Bravo. Unfortunately, when we got there most stalls were already closed and there was nothing interesting there. We walked through a different part of the city and as always ended up on the Malecon. We met the Canadian couple Roberta and Lauren (Lorenzo) in the restaurant and spent a very lively and fun evening together. The food here (Nim) was wonderful. They even had homemade baklava for dessert. Roberta is an artist (painter) and Lorenzo works with indigenous groups in the British Columbia. They are fun and interesting people and we’ll definitely try to keep in touch with them. When we got home, we sat on the patio and had a free mariachi concert for about 2 hours. Some group was having a Christmas party in the restaurant that backs to our patio wall (Juana La Loca) and hired a mariachi band as entertainment.